Promising free StarCraft style Steam RTS gets a new hero, challenges, and visual upgrades

There’s a lot to like about Stormgate. The free Steam game from Frost Giant Studios draws inspiration from RTS greats including StarCraft as well as Command and Conquer, and while its early access launch has been met with mixed reception I’m still watching it with keen interest. The fundamentals of gameplay are strong, and its Celestials are the most fascinating faction I’ve seen in a strategy game in years. Excitingly, Stormgate’s first major update includes a new Celestial hero alongside more maps, co-op challenges, and more.

“Since launching Stormgate into early access, we haven’t taken our foot off the gas at all,” game director Tim Campbell says. “I’m pleased to say our team has crammed a ton into this update that I think you’ll care about.” While some of the more dramatic updates the team has been working on for the free Steam game are still further out, such as those for its campaign missions, there’s a lot to play with in Stormgate 0.1.0.

The highlight of the update is Stormgate’s second Celestial hero, Kastiel. A ruthless heretic who has abandoned his culture’s traditional reverence for Animus, he instead weaponizes it for use against his foes. Capable of sacrificing both allied and enemy units to restore his health and boost his damage, he’s joined by an improved Arcship equipped with a powerful Soul Cannon. He’ll be available for free to all players who purchased either the ultimate early access pack on Steam or the ultimate founder’s pack via Kickstarter. Otherwise, you can try him out for free up to level five.

New co-op challenges will pit you and your friends against a range of game-changing modifiers, both positive and negative. For example, ‘Ready to Blow’ causes enemies to explode after death; ‘Infantry Assault’ spawns an enemy barracks every two minutes; ‘Gotta Go Fast’ speeds your units up by 50%, and ‘Reconstructed’ respawns fallen enemy units shortly after death in a weakened state. You’ll earn bonus experience for taking these on, and co-op progression has also been generally sped up across the board.

Alongside this, the game has had a notable visual bump. This applies to its maps and terrain, and the results are immediate and striking. Lighting has also been repositioned to create more interesting looking shadows. “Environments are a huge part of what immerses players into game worlds,” Campbell comments, “and this is still an area of very active development.” Vanguard poster character Amara also now has a redesigned model, which Campbell says is designed to look better in up-close scenes and is “set up for lip-syncing and face animations in the future.”

Hotkey customization has been improved, with the ability to add or remove modifier keys to your bindings. New targeting indicators will help you see the radius of abilities before you use them, and a ‘smart attack’ setting provides a way to quickly switch from move to attack-move commands using only your mouse. Frost Giant has also been working on pathfinding, with updates to its ‘push priority’ feature helping to give larger units space to move about smoothly and shove smaller ones out of their way. Infernal’s long-legged Weavers, meanwhile, can instead step cleanly over other units altogether.

Stormgate update 0.1.0 launches Thursday September 19. There’s much, much more to dig through in the full patch notes, including balance updates, additional maps, and improved UI for Stormgate’s observer and replay features.

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